21 - Bilkent Repository

BILKENT UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
)
MA MAJOR PROJECT EXAMINATION RESULT FORM
August 31, 1989
The examining committee appointed by the
Institute of Economics and Social Sciences for the
major project examination of the MA TEFL student
UĞUR ALTUNAY
has read the project of the student.
The committee has decided that the project
of the student is satisfactory/unsatisfactory,
Project Title:
PROBLEMS WITH TEACHING THE WORD ORDER
OF ENGLISH TO TURKISH STUDENTS
Project Advisor: Dr. John R. Aydelott
Bilkent University, MA TEFL Program
Committee Member: Dr. James G. Ward
English Teaching Officer, USIS
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PROBLEMS WITH TEACHING THE WORD ORDER OF ENGLISH
TO TURKISH STUDENTS
A MAJOR PROJECT
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF LETTERS
AND THE INSTITUTE OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
OF BILKENT UNIVERSITY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS IN
THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
BY
UGUR ALTUNAY
August, 1989
t certify that I have,read this major project and that in my
opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a major
project for the degree of Masters of Arts.
1 certify that I have read this major project and that in my
opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a major
project for the degree of Masters of Arts.
Approved for the
Institute of Economics and Social Sciences
^ f2. —
CONTENTS
Head ings:
INTRODUCTION
1
1.1.
Statement of the topic
1
1.2.
Purpose
2
1.3.
Method
2
1.4.
Limitations
3
SYNTAX:
WORD-ORDERS OF LANGUAGE
4
2.1.
Explanation of syntax
4
2.2.
Sentence analysis methods
6
2.2.1.
The IC Analysis
8
2.2.2.
Transformational-Generative Grammar
11
ANALYSIS OF SYNTACTIC ERRORS
19
3.1.
Explanation of error analysis
20
3.1.1.
Collection of data
21
3.1.2.
Identification of errors
21
3.1.3
Categorization into error types
21
3.1.4
Preparation of frequency tables and
histograms for comparison
21
3.1.5.
Identification of the areas of
difficulty in language
21
3.1.6.
Therapy or remedial practice
22
3.2.
Types,of errors which violate word order
23
3.3.
Syntactic errors made by Turkish learners
of English
24
111
ANALYSIS OP ERRORS:
4.1.
5.
A PRACTICAL STUDY
29
The errors
30
4.1.1.
False beginning
32
4.1.2.
Omission or missing word
33
4.1.3.
Use of a Turkish word
33
4.1.4.
Contradiction in a sentence
33
4.1.5.
Wrong structure
33
4.1.6.
Word choice
34
4.1.7.
Use of an extra word
34
4.1.8.
Pluralization
34
4.1.9.
Weak expression
35
WHY EFL LEARNERS MAKE SYNTACTIC ERRORS
36
5.1.
Learner strategies
37
5.2.
What to do to correct students' errors
39
CONCLUSION
44
REFERENCES
46
APPENDIXES
50
Table 1:
Table 2:
Table 3:
Table 4:
Frequencies of Errors Made by the Hazırlık
Students at Ege University
51
Frequencies of Errors Made by the Hazırlık
Students at Bilkent University
52
Frequencies of Errors Made by the Students
at Dokuz Eylül University Faculty of
Education
53
Frequencies of Errors Made by the Students
at Istanbul University Faculty of Education
54
Table 5:
Frequencies of Errors in the Composition Test 55
Table 6:
Frequencies of Errors in the Translation Test 56
57
RESUME
IV
1.
INTRODUCTIOH
1.1. Statenent of the topic
The topic of this paper, is the problems related to the
teaching of the word-order of English to university students in
Turkey.
This paper is also a study into the ways EFL teachers
can solve those problems.
Since English and Turkish come from two entirely different
language families, the word-orders of these two languages do not
look alike.
Therefore, Turkish learners of English have a lot of
difficulties in learning the syntax system of English.
Studying
and analyzing the types of errors which Turkish learners of
English produce will give us an idea of the ways we can overcome
the problems as well.
To be able to do this study, a thorough literature review
was conducted in order to collect information as to what syntax
is, why it is important, how we can discriminate between
"grammatical" and "ungrammatical" and how we can analyze
students' errors and correct them.
Furthermore, data were
collected in order to discern the errors and transfers which were
made by a limited sample of students.
been on students' written performances.
The focus has especially
The syntactic errors
they made while they were writing were discerned by a thorough
analysis of their papers.
Then, these errors were classified and
analyzed on the basis of the theoretical studies reviewed in the
professional literature.
In Section 2, what syntax is and how we analyze sentences
are discussed.
The theoretical basis on which the analytical
obtained through the analysis are introduced in Section 4,
Finally, learner strategies which are considered to be directly
related to the errors that learners make are summarized in
Section 5.
This section also includes some suggestions as to
what EFL teachers can do to help students overcome the
difficulties in learning/acquiring the word-order of English.
1.2.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the syntactic
errors of the Turkish learners of English and to give the Turkish
learners of English and EFL teachers an. insight to enable them
to handle syntactic problems.
This paper may also be helpful for
textbook writers to emphasize the problem areas in their
instructional materials.
It may also help course designers
establish objectives and goals of English courses, taking
the problem areas into consideration.
The rationale behind
studying the syntactic errors made by EFL learners is that
syntactic errors frequently inhibit communication because they
violate the meaning to a great deal.
1.3.
Method
As mentioned in the section above, the study is mainly
based upon the literature written by the linguists and the
methodologists who have studied syntax, error analysis, learner
strategies and error correction .techniques. On the other hand,
data consisting of the examination papers of 20 students were
collected at Bilkent University Hazırlık Program, at Ege
University Hazırlık Program, at Istanbul University Faculty of
Education and at Dokuz Eylül University Buca Faculty of
Education.
The aim of collecting data from four different
programs was to obtain a wide range of data and to establish a
comprehensive analysis of the syntactic errors on students'
written work to discern the problem areas in the field of
teaching the word-order of English.
After collecting the data,
an error analysis for the written data was conducted in order to
classify the syntactic errors.
Frequencies of error types were
calculated, and they are presented in the form of tables in
Appendixes.
The syntactic errors given as examples in Section 4
came out as a result of this study.
Ideas and suggestions of experts and of the writer of this
paper on the causes of errors and the correction techniques are
given in Section 5.
1.4.
Limitations
Though this study aims at giving an insight about syntax
and analyzing major syntactic errors committed in written English
by Turkish learners of English as a foreign language, the
study is limited to the professional literature and the data
samples used in this specific study.
These data samples are
typical of classroom performance, not communication outside of
the classroom setting.
Therefore, it is probable that other
kinds of syntactic errors would be made in different kinds of
settings.
Since the results presented in this research were all
obtained through the analysis of the limited number of papers
collected for this study, the generalizations made on the basis
of the analysis would also probably change in another study.
2. SYNTAX: WORD-ORDERS OF LANGUAGE
The aim in this section is to give an overall idea to the
reader as to what syntax is, why it is important in
communication, how sentences are analyzed and how we can
discriminate between "grammatical" and "ungrammatical" utterances
in order to be able to establish a basis for the analytical study
in Section 4.
Since the aim is not to give detailed theoretical
information on syntax but rather to present a practical study on
the written performances of the adult university students in
Turkey, only the points which are considered essential for the
analysis are outlined in this section.
2.1.
Explanation of syntax
Chomsky (1975) defines syntax as "the study of the
principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in
particular languages."
More or less, other linguists define
syntax in the same way (Culicover, 1982; Di Pietro, 1978; Vardar,
1980) .
As seen in the definition, syntax is a field of study, and
it is one of the components of grammar (Culicover, 1982).
Other
components of grammar are lexicon, phonology, and semantics.
Grammar is the complete description of a language, and in order
to have a complete description of any language, its syntax must
also be described.
When we say we know a particular language, we
also mean that we know its syntax (Fromkin and Rodman, 1983).
Knowing syntax means being able to put words successively in
order to communicate ideas, facts, thoughts to other people
either orally or in the written form.
Knowing a language also
means being able discriminate between acceptable and
unacceptable and between grammatical and ungrammatical.
In order
to be able to communicate with others, we should use a language
which follows some accepted patterns, and syntax is included in
those accepted patterns.
Words are not put together haphazardly
in an utterance (Culicover, 1982; Dizdaroglu, 1976; Fromkin and
Rodman, 1983; Stockwell, 1977).
According to Atabay, Özel and
Çam (1981) understanding the nature of a language greatly depends
upon understanding its syntactic structures and its syntactic
problems.
Syntactic structures of any language apply to a set of
rules which are called syntactic rules.
Syntactic rules
determine how morphemes and words must be combined to express a
particular meaning (Fromkin and Rodman, 1983).
For example, the following two sentences have different
meanings though they include exactly the same wotds:
i)
The man killed the thief,
ii)
The thief killed the man.
The following string of morphemes has even no linguistic
meaning and it is not grammatical though it includes the same
words with the sentences above:
iii)
man thief the killed the
Since the speakers of English know the rules of forming
grammatical sentences, they can easily recognize ungrammatical
utterances as well.
languages.
This is also true for the speakers of other
Our brains discriminate between grammatical and
ungrammatical utterances, but nobody knows how it happens because
human brain is still a mystery for us.
Chomsky calls brain .as a
black box (Ellis, 1985).
From the examples above the following generalizations can be
made :
1. Different orderings of words may result in a change in
the meaning of a sentence.
2. Not all possible sequences of words are grammatical or
intelligible.
'
According to Fromkin and Rodman (1980), syntactic rules
account for the following:
1. the grammaticalness of sentences
2. the ordering of words and morphemes
3. our knowledge of structural ambiguity
4. our knowledge that sentences may be paraphrases of each '
other
5. our knowledge of the grammatical function of each part of
a sentence, that is, of the grammatical relations
6. a speakers' ability to produce and understand an infinite
set of possible utterances.
Syntactic rules are of various kinds.
There are rules to
make questions, to make affirmative sentences, to make negative
sentences, to make inverted sentences which all change from
language to language.
2.2.
Sentence analysis methods
As discussed in the previous sub-section, syntactic rules
determine the acceptable sequences of words in a sentence, but a
6
sentence is more than only a sequence of single words.
The
components in a sentence can be put into different groups and
into different subgroups depending upon their relationships
(Culicover, 1982; Fowler, 1971; Fromkin and Rodman, 1983; Palmer,
1983).
Palmer (1983) discusses two ways of dividing sentences into
groups and subgroups.
The first one is the immediate constituent
(I. C.) analysis, and the other is the tree diagram analysis
which are both based upon the same rationale and different in
illustration only.
The rationale behind those analyses is that
sentences can be understood better, and such analyses are
necessary because sentences may have different meanings in their
surface structures and deep structures.
For example, the
following sentences are the same in their surface structures but
are different in their deep structures:
a)
Ralph is easy to deceive.
b)
Ralph is eager to deceive.
In the first sentence, Ralph is the one who is deceived
easily, but in the second one he is the one who is going to
deceive another person.
Therefore, analyzing sentences
according to the functions of the words in them may not always
give us the meaning of complete sentences.
Meaning is received
only after decoding an utterance no matter whether it is written
or oral.
Formerly, constituent analysis and tree diagram analysis
were based upon the surface structures of sentences only.
Chomsky (1978) claims that these two kinds of analysis are
inefficient in explaining how we understand messages through
written or oral messages.
He developed another theory which he
called Transformational-Generative Grammar as a reaction to those
theories.
Chomsky suggests that linguists analyze sentences not
only relating them to their syntactic knowledge but also to
the deep structures by using transformations.
As discussed above, the major sentence analysis types are
The IC Analysis and The Tree Diagram Analysis.
In the following
sub-section. The IC Analysis is explained, and the Tree Diagram
Analysis is introduced in the sub-section which deals with The
Transformational-Generative Grammar.
2.2.1.
The IC Analysis
In the IC analysis, sentences are first divided into their
main components or immediate constituents.
Each of them is then
subdivided until the ultimate costituent of the sentence is
reached (Herndon, 1976).
Let us analyze the following sentence:
The girls cheerfully greeted the boys.
The first cut is made to divide the sentence into its
two major components as subject and predicate:
The girls
cheerfu1Iv
Structures :
Noun Phrase
Verb Phrase
Functions :
Subject
Predicate
The second cut is made within the predicate to obtain the
verbal element and complement (or object):
The girls.
cheerful ly__ greeted
Structures :
Noun Phrase
Verb Phrase
Noun Phrase
Verbal Element
Complement
(Object)
Functions :
Subject
The final cut is made to divide the sentence into its
ultimate elements:
Tlifi. girls.
g r e e t-sd.
the
bovs.
Structures
Determ.lner
Noun
Adverb
Verb
Deter­
miner Noun
Head
Modi­
fier
Head
Modi­
fier
Functions:
Modi­
fier
Head
Let us analyze a more complex sentence:
Uie. handsome mar pai or his. blark and white coat,
1
2
3
4 5
6
7
8
9
10
hair, and left.
13
14 15
(To put all the words on the same line, each word is given a
number here.
The following analysis is made by using these
numbers.)
6
7
10
8
10
11
12
13
14
15
Structures:
(1) Determiner, (2) Adjective, (3) Noun, (4) Verb,
(5) Preposition, (6) Possessive Pronoun, (7) Adjective,
(8) Conjunction, (9) Adjective, (10) Noun, (11) Verb,
(12) Possessive Pronoun, (13) Noun, (14) Conjunction, (15) Verb.
Functions:
(1) Modifier, (2) Modifier, (3) Head, (4) Head,
(5) Verb Particle, (6) Modifier, (7) Modifier, (8) Connector,
(9) Modifier, (10) Head, (11) Head, (12) Modifier, (13) Head,
(14) Connector, (15) Head.
2.2.2.
Transformational-Generative Grammar
Herndon (1976) states that traditional approaches to
grammatical analysis were based upon only the surface structures
of utterances.
He analyzes Chomsky's theory of Transformational-
Generative Grammar and divides the communicative process into the
seven following steps, only the first two of which, he says, were
taken into account by traditionalists:
1. Whatever stimulates an idea in the mind of the speaker
2. The formulation of a language statement by the speaker
3. The physical act of speaking
4. Sound waves in the atmosphere
5. The physical process of hearing
6. The mental sorting of the language statement by the
hearer
7. Understanding of the idea by the learner
Eggen, Kauchak and Harder (1979) mention that one has to
process information to understand a certain message.
According
to Eggen, et al., our brains operate like computers.
When a new
piece of information is received by way of oral, written or
11
visual displays, it is processed in the brain.
processes the new information.
The brain
In other words, hearers or
readers sort through their schemata in order to find previously
acquired knowledge (i.e. they make use of their background
knowledge), or they develop new schemata (Altunay, 1989).
Chomsky's theory is somewhat a basis for these recent
theories and explanations of foreign language learning.
Chomsky
(1978) says that the syntactic component of the grammar includes
two types of syntactic rules:
i)
i)
phrase-structure rules
ii)
transformational rules
Phrase-structure rules: These rules explain what every
constituent can be composed of.
These rules presuppose that
speakers of any language have the linguistic knowledge about the
constituent structures of their language.
Each language has its
own rules, and English therefore has its own phrase-structure
rules which explain how sentences can be formed grammatically.
Examples:
a)
A verb alone:
The boy ran.
VP — >
b)
V
(VP:
Verb phrase, V:
Verb)
A verb followed by a noun phrase that is followed by a
prepositional phrase:
The girl wrote the letter in her room.
noun phrase
prep, phr.
VP
— > V
NP
PP
(NP:
PP: Prepositional Phrase)
12
Noun Phrase,
Major phrase-structure rules in English are as follows:
S
— > NP
VP
(S:
Sentence)
Art
NP
— > {
(AP)
N}
(Art:
Article, Pro:
Pro
Pronoun, AP: Adjectival Phrase, N:
AP
— > (AP)
Noun)
Adj
(Adj: Adjective)
(NP)
VP
— > V
{
PP
— > p
NP
(PP)
S
}
Instead of using the IC analysis technique in analyzing the
phrase structure rule on which a sentence is based, tree diagram
analysis may be more helpful.
A tree diagram is like a tree with
its branches extending in a downward direction.
It has an
illustrative quality, and divisions are shown at points which are
called nodes.
At the bottom of the diagram, we see the single
words of which the sentence is composed.
13
Examples:
a)
Pro
They
you
say
hate
the
teacher
b)
Art
The
drew
man
14
picture.
ii) Transformational Rules:
The meaning of a sentence lies
in the deep structure, not in the surface structure.
Transformations relate the meaning of a sentence to its surface
form that is acceptable to the native speakers of English
(Chomsky, 1978; Fowler, 1971; Palmer, 1984).
Therefore, phrase-
structure rules account for the syntactic knowledge which
speakers possess about their language (Fromkin and Rodman, 1983);
whereas, transformational rules account for both syntactic and
semantic knowledge which those speakers possess.
For example, a speaker of English can easily comprehend the
following sentence by making some transformations:
The young woman cleaned the dirty dishes.
The speaker makes the following transformations
unconsciously to comprehend the whole sentence:
i)
ii)
iii)
The woman was young,
She cleaned the dishes,
The dishes were dirty.
This can be put into a tree diagram form as follows:
15
Native speakers can also comprehend complex sentences by
making transformations.
Example:
The woman who won the prize bought a car which was
antique.
The transformations:
i)
ii)
iii)
The woman won a prize,
The woman bought a car.
The car was antique.
These transformations can be shown in the tree diagram as
shown in Figure 1:
16
Figure 1:
The Tree Diagram of an Example Sentence
Briefly, the phrase-structure rules combine with lexicon to
generate a deep structure for every sentence in English (Fromkin
and Rodman, 1983).
By making use of transformations, we get to
the surface structure which is the oral or written message
itself, and we get to the deep structure from the surface
structure in order to comprehend what is said or written again by
making use of various transformations (Chomsky, 1978).
3.
ANALYSIS OF SYNTACTIC ERRORS
The previous section presents the theory of syntax, its
importance in relation to communication and grammar, and how we
are able to discriminate between grammatical and ungrammatical
utterances on the basis of mental and social capacities of native
speakers of a language.
This section presents the review of literature on syntactic
errors.
First of all, error analysis is described, and how
analyzing errors can help EFL teachers is also discussed before
going into actual analysis which is the major concern of Section
4.
After the types of errors which are considered to violate
sentence structure is given in an inventory form, the data from
four different universitties of Turkey are analyzed objectively
in Section 4 without making any interpretations, and the results
of these analyses are presented in the form of tables in the
V
Appendixes. The interpretation of the errors based upon the
analyses is given along with the examples.
18
'
3.1.
Explanation of error analysis
Error analysis is a procedure used by both experts who are
conducting research on how people are learning a language and
by teachers who want to study their students' errors
systematically to be able to predict:
i) why their students make those errors and
ii) how they can help their students in order to overcome
their difficulties in learning the foreign language.
As implied above, error analysis is a diagnostic process in
comparison with contrastive analysis and it involves, in broad
terms, collecting samples of learner language (interlanguage),
identifying the errors in the samples collected, describing these
errors, classifying them according to their hypothesized causes,
and evaluating them in terms of their seriousness in order to
plan later remedial instruction focusing on the errors (Corder,
1985; Ellis, 1985; Sridhar, 1981; Thorn, 1989).
Error analysis
has a diagnostic quality for the reasons mentioned above, but it
also has a predictive quality since it enables EFL teachers to
predict why their students make certain types of mistakes, which
lead them to diagnose the problem areas.
Contrastive analysis
theory is more theoretical since it is based on the idea that
comparison of two language systems can help researchers discern
problem
areas in advance (Corder, 1985).
On the other hand,
error analysis has arisen from the fact that only a comprehensive
analysis of students' errors can best explain the nature of
foreign language learning and, of course, interlanguage (Corder,
1985; Ellis, 1985; Sridhar, 1981).
19
According to Ellis (1985)
error analysis provides us with basically two kinds of
information :
1.
The linguistic type of errors and
2.
The psycholinguistic type of errors.
Error analysis provides us with the information as to
whether the
error is made because of :
i) overgeneralization of rules
ii)
ignorance of rule restrictions
H i ) İnoomplötd application of rules
iv) false concepts hyptothesised.
The steps of error analysis, through which this research is
conducted as well, are collection of data, identification of
errors, categorization into error types, preparation of frequency
tables and histograms for comparison, identification of the areas
of difficulty in language and therapy or remedial practice
(Sridhar, 1981; Thorn, 1989).
3.1.1.
Collection of data
The teacher selects the type of data, and also
determines the amount of data.
If a study like the one
introduced in Section 4 of this paper is being conducted, the
study can also be limited to certain types of errors only, rather
than analysis of all the errors.
The data can be collected
through various ways (e.g., observing students in their
classroom, audio or video taping, oral or written testing,
assigning homework).
In this study of problems with teaching the
word-order of English in general, and syntactic errors made by
20
Turkish students in particular, the students were given written
tests.
3..1.2.
Identification of errors
All errors are marked on students' papers, or written
down if the data are on a tape.
The type of each error may also
be mentioned while marking or writing it down.
3.1.3.
Categorization into error types
After all errors are marked, they may be categorized
according to:
i) their communicative values and
ii) grammatical importance.
3.1.4.
Preparation of frecjuency distribution tables and
histograms for comparison
Frequency tables.present an effective visual
presentation of each error type with its quantitative description
in comparison with other error types.
The tables help people
conducting the research prepare an inventory of errors in terms
of the criteria used for the classification of errors.
Frequency
tables and histograms provide an unquestionable and objective
basis for qualitative analysis as well.
Without them, the
qualitative analysis alone may not convince other people.
3.1.5.
Identification of the areas of difficulty in language
Once the inventory of errors is prepared, the problem
areas are easy to identify.
Those with the highest frequency are
of special difficulty for most of the students tested or
observed.
Also the ones which inhibit communication form the
21
major problem areas whioh should be dealt with immediately.
3.1.0.
Therapy or remedial praotice
According to Corder (1982) errors are of the following
two kinds:
i) mistakes caused by inadequate knowledge (learners
are not aware of such errors) and
ii) mistakes of performance (errors which are easily
corrected by learners themselves if they realize
their errors)
The first type of errors are systematically used by
learners because they are produced due to their false hypotheses;
so learners are never aware of their errors of the first kind.
Special remedial activities probably accompanied by some formal
explanation need to be conducted to correct such errors depending
on the methodology the teacher is applying.
The latter type of
errors require fewer remedial activities since they are only
"slips of the tongue" or "slips of the pen” but not due to lack
of information (Corder, 1982).
No special activity is needed if
such errors are not frequent because most of the errors made by
EFL learners are developmental errors.
will disappear as the
That is to say, errors
acquisition process goes on (Dulay, Burt
and Krashen, 1982; Krashen and Terrell, 1983) just as it happens
in the process of mother tongue acquisition.
Babies are not
educated under formal tutoring, but they acquire the language in
socio-1inguistic situations by way of listening, observing,
hypothesis testing (Ellis, 1985), interaction, and information
processing (Eggen, et al., 1985).
22
3.2.
Types C3f errors which violate word order
Various lists of linguistic error types have been produced
by different researchers.
This section and the next one deal
with two of them; namely, a list of general syntactic errors and
a list of errors made by Turkish learners of English are
presented.
Du lay, et al. (1982) present the taxonomy developed by E.
Politzer and A. Ramirez in 1973, and they divide the syntactic
errors into four major classes as outlined below:
1.
2.
3.
Noun Phrase
-Determiners (omission of the article,
substitution of definite article for
possessive pronoun, use of possessive
with the article, use of wrong
possessive)
-Nominalization (simple verb used
instead of -ing. preposition hx
omitted)
-Number (substitution of singulars for
plurals, substitution of plurals for
singulars)
-Use of pronouns (omission of the subject
pronoun, omission of the "dummy'' pronoun
it. omission of object pronouns, subject
pronoun used as a redundant element,
alternating use of pronouns by number as
well as gender, use of me. as a subject)
-Use of prepositions (omission of
preposition, misuse of prepositions)
Verb Phrase
-Omission of a verb (omission of main
verb, omission of to be)
-Use of progressive tense (omission of
be., replacement of -ing by the simple
verb form, substitution of the
progressive for the simple past)
-Agreement of subject and verb
(disagreement of subject and verb
person, disagreement of subject and
number, disagreement of subject and
tense )
Verb-and-Verb Construction
-Embedding of a noun-and-verb construction
in another noun-and-verb construction
23
-Omission of .tjQ. in identical subject
construction
-Omission of Jia in the verb-and-verb
construction
-Attachment of the past marker to the
dependent verb
Word Order
-Repetition of the object
-Adjectival modifiers placed after
noun
Some Transformations
-Negative transformation (formation
of HU or not without the auxiliary
d o . multiple negation)
-Question transformation (omission
of auxiliary)
-There transformation (use of is.
instead of are. omission of there.
.use of it was instead of there vias)
-Subordinate clause transformation
(use of for for so that, use of
indicative for conditional)
3.3.
Syntactic errors made by Turkish learners of English
Before presenting the data analysis conducted for this
particular study, some other studies are outlined in this
section .
The most descriptive recent studies on the syntactic errors
made by Turkish learners of English are those by
(1971) and Thompson (1987).
Sebuktekin
Sebuktekin presents a thorough
grammar book of Turkish and compares Turkish with English so that
English teachers can discern what the problem areas are for their
learners.
Thompson briefly introduces the syntactic errors made
by Turkish learners.
According to him, Turkish students quickly
acquire the basic English structures as they apply their
background information of LI to simple sentences, but continue to
have trouble in more complex structures.
Turkish is a "subject-object-verb" language, where qualifier
precedes qualified, and subordinate clauses precede main
24
sentences, but this rule is not always followed in speech and in
writing.
All adjectivals, regardless of their length, precede
their substantive.
In some areas related to word order, mistakes are made by
Turkish students as Thompson suggests:
i)
Verbs:
Person, number, tense, aspect, voice, mood,
modality and polarity are all indicated in Turkish verbs.
Therefore, English forms cause great difficulty.
ii)
Be:
There is no independent verb like hfi. in Turkish.
A common mistake is:
* My father teacher.
iii)
Tine, tense, and aspect:
Differences in the verb
forms of the two languages cause the following difficulties:
a.
Students may use the continuous tense with stative
verbs (e.g., lincitt and aafi.) * I am knowing English.
I am seeing my teacher every day.
b.
Instead of the will/shall future, the present tense
may sometimes be used.
"Will you go to the movies?"
* Yes, I do.
*■ Ask Gül; she tells you.
c.
The past continuous and the used tû structure may
sometimes be confused.
25
^ I was often going to the cinema when I was in
Ankara.
d . If something happened a long time ago, students tend
to use the past perfect tense instead of the past tense.
* This building had been built a hundred years ago.
* I had sent a letter to you last month, but I
couldn't receive any answer from you.
iv)
Modal verbs:
Turkish possesses a lot of modal verbs
which have similar meanings to the English modals, including
separate forms such as I was able to read / I could have done it.
or I_.had tQ_sayL-_Lha.t / You should have mailed it. Therefore,
students are familiar with the meanings displayed by the English
modals, but still the differences between shouId. must. have to
and have got to cause difficulty.
v)
Conditionals:
Everything mentioned above is true for
certain conditionals, and also the past unreal is used for
the present unreals in some certain situations.
>K If he did not cross the street at the red light, he
would not be killed (In a situation in which the man already
crossed the street at the red light and he was killed in a
traffic accident).
vi)
The passive voice:
Structurally passives cause problems,
This coffee is too hot to be drunk.
^ It is easy to be read.
♦ When will the school be closed?
26
vii)
Participles and subordinate clauses:
Turkish
participles and clause structures are different from English, and
English equivalents present a serious learning problem.
The man said so that he will come soon.
viii)
Relative clauses:
Relative clauses are adjectival
and they go in Turkish before the noun they modify.
English
relative clauses are therefore difficult to acquire for Turkish
learners.
That I saw the woman was walking.
ix)
Nouns:
Turkish nouns are genderless, but number
possession and case are all indicated through nouns.
The plural
is used less than in English especially if a noun is indefinite
or generic, and after number-words.
* In the Turkey, potato too cheap.
*■ I spend the evenings reading magazine.
I saw a few bird.
* five week ago
x)
Personal pronouns:
are in English.
These are less common than they
Objective pronouns are even less.
* When my brother had finished lunch, went out.
He asked some money, for this reason I gave.
xi)
Articles:
There is an indefinite article in Turkish,
and it is placed between an adjective and a noun.
used for professions or in negative existentiais.
27
It is not
* I am student.
* There wasn't bus.
xii)
Adjectives:
Comparatives are not marked in Turkish
all the time.
* I eat few butter than him.
xiii)
Quantifiers:
Few and little are problems for Turks.
* There are only a little students in the classroom.
Ж He drank fewer water day by day.
xiv)
Adverbs:
Students may have trouble in using adverbs
and adjectives.
* He generally drives slow.
Students also use here and there as nouns.
* Here is beautiful place.
* Does he like there?
xv)
Conjunctions:
Students are confused particularly
by e,yjen if, however, whether_...or ·
Turkish learners also have a tendency not to use
obligatory and., ao. or hui..
I looked, they had gone.
^ He ran, he caught the bus.
xvi)
Prepositions:
The prepositions which create
confusion for Turkish learners are ah/in/iin.; ±Jian/fxo.ai; with/by;
tn; until/as far as/as much as/up to/by; with/near/up -to.·
28
They sometimes drop the preposition even though it is
necessary.
Examples:
* in Sunday
* for learn German
* by pen
^ until the school
He must get back until Tuesday.
* They went İstanbul.
4. ANALYSIS OF ERRORS: A PRACTICAL STUDY
The aim in this section is to present the analysis of the
data collected from four universities in order to give an insight
as to what type of errors' are made by university students.
In
order to collect the data, two groups of ten students were given
a composition test (one class is at Ege University, the other at
Bilkent University).
In addition, 20 translation test papers
from two universities (one class is at Dokuz Eylül University,
the other at İstanbul University) were collected in order to see
if Turkish learners make transfers from Turkish into English.
Then the papers were analyzed to mark the errors and to classify
them.
groups.
The errors related to syntax were classified into nine
Each error type was also analyzed qualitatively with
examples of errors.
The quantitative findings of the analysis
are shown in the form of tables in the Appendixes.
29
4 -1.
The errors
As far as syntactic errors are concerned, it is hard to
determine what type of errors destroy the syntax of a sentence
and what type of errors do not.
In this study, nine types of errors which are considered to
violate the word-order of a sentence have been studied.
They are
false beginning (FB), omission or missing word (0), use of a
Turkish word (TW), contradictory expressions (C), wrong
structuring (WS), word choice (WCh), use of an extra word (EW),
pluralization (P) and weak expression (WE).
Again it is hard to determine which sentence has a wrong
structure and which sentence has a weak expression.
It must be
kept in mind that a sentence with a weak expression has most
probably a wrong structure as well, and the meaning in such a
sentence is unclear.
Through the analysis, it was observed that
many errors were made by a large number of students whereas some
of them were made by only a small number of students.
It is obvious that some errors were due to the interference
of Turkish but most of those errors appeared on the translation
papers only.
Therefore, it is hard to generalize if those
errors are interference errors and if students frequently make
those errors.
Nevertheless, most of the errors on the
composition papers do not look like interference errors.
Dulay,
et al. (1982) say, therefore, most of the errors are
developmental and they disappear as the instruction continues.
After all papers were checked carefully, the errors which could
deviate from the correct syntax were grouped into the nine
classes as mentioned above.
30
Through the analysis, it was found that the gradation of the
errors made in the composition test is as follows (from the most
common to the least common):
i) Wrong structure
ii) False beginning
iii) Word choice
iv) Weak expression; unclear sentence and word choice errors
v) Omission or missing word
vi) Use of a Turkish word
vii) Pluralization
viii) Contradiction in the sentence
ix) Use of an extra word
As seen in the list above, the main problem of the students
in writing is with structure.
They also have difficulty with
beginnings of sentences and with word choice.
They also
produce sentences with weak expression probably due to lack of
knowledge of L2 or due to the interference of the mother tongue
(See Section 5).
The gradation of errors made in the translation
test is as the following (again from the most common to the least
common):
i) Weak expression, unclear sentence
ii) Word choice
iii)
Wrong structuring
iv) Use of a Turkish word
v) Omission or missing word
vi) Pluralization
vii)
False beginning, contradiction and use of extra words
31
As observed on the list, students cannot produce
semantically clear sentences on the translation test though
sometimes these sentences are structurally acceptable.
They also
have problems with word choice most probably due to lack
of vocabulary knowledge or because they do not know the system of
either of the two languages or, worse, both of them.
Let us
analyze each error type by presenting relevant examples:
4.1.1.
False beginning:
The students began some sentences
with the words, for example, af ter ^ before ^ and.^ but.
These were
more common in the composition test.
* After we didn't drink tea a lot of days.
* Because thousands of people died in that explosion.
^ Because Anna wasn't a young girl and her health
was getting worse.
i'
4.1.2.
Onission or nissing word:
Sometimes, the students forgot
to use a word which is necessary in the sentence.
in the translation test.
*
A lot of people (were) homeless
*
I (was) afraid of this accident
*
that Antalya (i:s) located today
<the) Chernobyl accident
*
•..people objected (to) that.
I stayed (in) Isstanbu1.
*
I (was) worried very much.
..fell in love (with) her.
32
These were
4.1.3.
Use of a Turkish word:
When the students failed to utter
the English word, they sometimes wrote the Turkish word instead.
Though some students used Turkish words in the exam, mostly the
ones who took the translation test used Turkish words.
* Turkey (etkilendi) this explosion.
* We took meal and (çadır).
* Hatta, some people in Turkey didn't drink tea.
* Ell, Anna wasn't still a young woman.
* a suitable ceza
* She took back his linvan.
The interesting point is that, the students underlined the
Turkish words or enclosed them in parentheses to indicate they
are not English.
4.1.4.
Contradiction in a sentence:
Sometimes parts of
sentences were contradictory, or they did not have coherence.
This is not a very common error.
* In 1986, I was 15 years old, but I was very sorry.
4.1.5.
Wrong structure:
This was the most common error for
those who took the composition test.
It was also one of the
major problems for those who took the translation test.
the most important error type which directly violated the
syntactic structure of a sentence.
* I didn't want a lot of people died.
* Everybody was shocked, so did I.
33
This was
♦ Some scientist said that accident would many injure
and die in future.
♦ .. .many children was born. ..
♦ continuing using them
^ Everybody in the country was believing...
4.1.6.
Word choice:
words in sentences.
Students sometimes wrote unsuitable
This is common for both groups.
♦ We didn't understand very good.
♦ I was very thrilling (The student actually means
* ... is the biggest
in the world
* They celebrated him.
Collit's Italian wife cLaad.
* ...the aid should be carried out permanently...
* Great amount of tea was eliminated.
* ...this country gave very necessary knowledge.
4.1.7.
Use of an extra word:
This is not a very common
error.
* I didn't want tfl. a new explosion either.
4.1.8.
Pluralization: This is a problem for those who took
the composition test.
* A lot of country was ...
* They lost their job.
* this actions
>*: ...one of the biggest and strongest country in the
world
34
4.1.9.
Weak expression:
areas for both groups.
This was one of the major problem
It must be stated here that it is hard to
decide whether a sentence is poorly-structured or the expression
is weak.
The reason is that the sentence is difficult to
understand either because of the grammatical errors or the
meaning is lost or because students translated from Turkish word
by word.
They are explaining a lot of lies for it.
't (to) live an adventure
♦
like he looks at the other things
♦
things he sees and lives in this world
♦ it is a cloth he's put off
^ presents to be bought
From the data the following generalizations can be made:
1.
The most important problem areas for both groups
were structure (i.e., the way sentences are formed), word choice
and expressing ideas in the target language.
2.
The order of errors according to their frequencies
were different on a test for which students did not need their
knowledge of LI (i.e. the composition test) and on a test for
which students needed to know both languages well (i.e. the
translation test).
On the other hand, major problem areas were
more or less the same in both cases.
35
5.
WHY
KVL
LliARNEHS MAKE SYNTACTIC ERRORS
Host of the time, teachers easily recognize their students'
errors both in their oral practices or in their written
performances, but it is hard to explain why a certain utterance
is erroneous or why students make certain types of errors
(Krashen, 1986).
To be able to explain why students make
particular errors, we need to observe them for a long period of
time in order to see what learning strategies they are using
(Ellis, 1985).
Nevertheless, there are some experts who believe
that the comparison and the contrast of the mother tongue and the
target language help us predict the problem areas (James, 1980).
On the other hand, most EFL experts claim that The Contrastive
Analysis Theory fails to predict the problem areas most of the
time just because it ignores the fact that learners have their
own unique ways of learning a foreign language (Ellis, 1985;
Thorn, 1989).
Therefore, they say, it is better to study the
actual performances of students to be able to diagnose the
problem areas and prepare remedial activities accordingly as The
Error Analysis Theory suggests (Corder, 1982; Corder, 1985;
Ellis, 1985; Sridhar, 1981).
This section introduces a variety of strategies which
explain the ways that learners follow in acquiring a foreign
language, and, therefore, these strategies may also clarify why
students make errors in general and syntactic errors in
particular.
36
í).I. Learner strategies
According to Ellis (1985), the learner has two types of
foreign language knowledge:
declarative knowledge which consists
of internalized target language rules and memorized chunks of
language and procedural rules which consist of strategies and
procedures employed by the learner to procesé the target language
data for acquisition and for use.
Learners develop their own ways to acquire the procedural
rules depending on the strategies they use.
of tvjo kinds:
These strategies are
behavioral strategies to communicate in social
situations and mental strategies to learn/acquire cognitive
aspects of the foreign language (i.e. its grammar, phonology,
and semantics).
In order to learn the cognitive rules of the target
language, learners accumulate and automatize the rules in their
schema by attending to input (that is the target language as a
whole) and by simplifying through the use of their schema to
transform the input into the intake (that is, the part of the
target language which is already acquired by learners or, in
other words, learners' background knowledge of the target
language) (Ellis, 1985; Carrell and Eisterhold, 1987; Eggen,
1979) ..
Ellis (1985) states that learners develop two types of
writing and speech.
They are formulaic speech/writing and
creative speech/writing.
While developing the formulaic speech
or writing knowledge, they memorize patterns or they imitate
patterns or they analyze patterns.
In memorization and
t
imitation, comprehension does not play a major role; but when
37
learners analyze patterns, they do that to discover the rule and
to understand it.
Once they analyze the patterns, they
synthesize them by making use of their previous knowledge (i.e.
schemata) in order to form generalizations (Eggen, 1979).
Creative speech or writing is different from the formulaic
ones in terms of the process because learners try to build
something of their own based on their schemata. To do that, first
of all they form a hypothesis.
They form the hypothesis by
making use of prior linguistic knowledge (i.e. either the first
language knowledge or the schemata about the L2) or by inducing
new rules from the input data.
For example, Turkish learners of
English forget to use the suffix -s. with the third person
singular in the simple present tense probably due to the first
language effect or for some other reasons, which is a false
hypothesis they usually make; but as the learning process goes
on, they realize that it is a false hypothesis and they learn the
true form.
Another strategy that learners use is simplification.
Students may simplify the rules by putting certain rules into
categories to decrease the complexity of L2 (Corder, 1981).
Learners may also infer when they are unable to derive
L2 rules successfully from the input for some reason.
Inferencing is inducing one's own rule by transferring similar
rules from LI or by overgeneralizing a rule (For example,
students may say "No like beer," instead of saying "I don't like
beer" at the early stages of their acquisition procesS, which is
an overgenera J.ization of the word rui in negations) (Ellis, 1985).
38
Students may delete some elements with semantic value.
For
example, instead of saying "She loves me," they may simply say
"She me" and give the complete meaning by using hand gestures.
This strategy is referred to as semantic simplification.
Another strategy used by most of the learners is monitoring
(Krashen and Terrell, 1983).
They monitor their speech or their
writing in order to avoid errors.
According to Krashen and
Terrell (1983) if teachers conduct activities which decrease the
anxiety in their classrooms, they will have also helped their
students to lower the affective filter which, most of the time,
makes the acquisition process unnatural and difficult.
The lower
the affective filter, the less learners monitor their speech and
writing, and they learn more easily.
In short, each learner might use a different strategy or a
variety of strategies, and learners' errors can be better
understood if we know which strategy our learners use.
Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why a certain error is
made, and if we cannot do that, how can we correct that error?
5.2.
What to do to correct students' errors
Krashen (1986) says he can easily recognize the error in an
utterance.
According to him, errors can be recognized, but it is
almost impossible to understand why the student makes that error.
On the other hand, contrastive analysists think that if the
target language and the native language are compared and
contrasted in terms of their phonology, syntax, morphology and
semantics, it is possible to predict the problem areas
(James, 1980; Di Pietro, 1978).
39
Error analysists think that students do not always make the
predicted errors.
Corder (198S) states that we need to study
students' language (i.e. interlanguage) to discern their errors
and to offer solutions.
Corder (1978) mentions two hypotheses
about the route of second language acquisition.
Me says the
strong hypothesis proposes that all learners of a particular
second language follovi roughly the same sequence of development
whatever their mother tongue.
He also mentions that the weak
form claims no more than that all learners having a particular
mother tongue follow the same sequence in the acquisition of some
second language.
Burt and Kiparsky (1978) state that teachers
can recognize and respond to the particular problems of their own
students by becoming thoroughly familiar with their error
regular ities.
The methodologists who suggest that teachers correct errors
have different ideas as to how errors should be corrected.
For
example, the supporters of the Audio-Lingual Approach and of
other traditional approaches believe that errors are sins and they
should be corrected at once (Ellis, 1985).
The point they make
is that once learners mislearn something in the target language,
it is very hard to correct that error.
According to them
language learning is possible through habit-formation activities.
The more students practice, the more they learn.
The supporters of the Natural Approach and the Communicative
Approach, on the other hand, say that people learn a foreign
language the way they learnt their mother tongues (Krashen and
Terrell, 1983).
In other vjords, the route of the language
acquisition is the same for everybody as claimed by the
40
SfUpporters of the strong hypothesis of second language
acquisition (Corder, 1978).
The errors made throughout the
language acquisition process are natural.
According to Du lay, et al. (1982), studying learners' errors
serves two major purposes:
1. it provides data about the nature of the language
learning process and
2. it indicates which part of the target language students
have most difficulty.
Hubbard, et al. (1985) and Ellis (1985) discuss behaviorist
attitudes towards errors in the classroom.
They say that
behaviorists believe in the correction of errors "by a
bombardment of correct forms."
In the mentalist point of view,
"error is inevitable, it is an integral part of the learning
process" (Hubbard, et al., 1985).
Errors also allow teachers to
adjust the level of difficulty, taking the students' progress and
motivation into consideration.
Dulay, et al. (1982) do not believe in the use of error
correction.
They also think that most of the errors are not
caused by LI interference though it is hard to know the reasons
for errors.
Dulay, et al.(1982) mention a research conducted by
Hernandez-Charez to support this theory:
... although Spanish plurals are formed almost
exactly like English plurals, Spanish speaking
children still go through a plural-less stage as they
learn English.
Moreover, supporters of modern approaches claim that even
the errors which look like transfers from LI may not be
41
transfers.
Hatch (.1978) mentions a study by Dulay and Burt
wtiich discerned that at least"^ for child second language learners,
first language interference was unimportant in the acquisition of
syntax.
Cohen (1987) states that the way a teacher corrects
students' errors may cause errors if the correction is inefficient
or if the teacher repeats students' errors.
Walz (1982) discusses which errors teachers should correct.
He mentions that Johannson says teachers should not focus on form
but on meaning.
What teachers should do is to help their
students develop their communication skills.
teachers should focus on comprehensibility.
He suggests that
If an error does not
inhibit communication and if it is not frequent, teachers do not
need to correct that error.
Walz (1982) also presents some ways to correct errors:
i) Self-correction:
Teachers may help students correct their errors by
themselves by pinpointing the error, by cueing, by generating
simple sentences, by explaining key words, by questioning and by
using other techniques which serve the same purpose.
ii) Peer correction:
Teachers; can use the techniques mentioned in the self­
correction item.
iii) Teacher correction:
Teachers may directly provide the correct answer, or
they may indirectly correct errors by giving discrimination
42
exercises or by paraphrasing.
Dulay, et a.l. (1982) and Ellis (1985), on the other hand,
state that recent research has shown that the way people
acquire languages is the same everywhere, so we should not worry
about errors.
student.
Most of them are not due to instruction or to the
Ki'ashen and Terrell (1983) say that as long as teachers
provide their students with comprehensible input which is always
slightly above the students' level, students will learn.
43
COHCUISION
/
Syntax is an essential component of a language.
If a
sentence is formed poorly, the meaning will also be lost in most
cases.
Therefore, syntactic errors constitute a major part of
the studies on learners' language.
The better we understand
learners' language, the better we can explain the nature of the
syntactic errors as well, and only in that way can we find a way
to solve the problems with teaching the word-order of English
to Turkish students.
Syntactic errors are of various types.
Traditionalists
claim that errors caused by LI interference form the greatest
part of all errors.
On the other hand, supporters of modern
approaches to FLT (Foreign Language Teaching) claim that most
errors are developmental.
Therefore, they will disappear
throughout the language acquisition process.
Their point is
that teachers should not worry about errors.
What they should do
is to provide their students with comprehensible input slightly
above the level of students' competence.
They say teachers
should enable the learners to do something with the language but
not to focus on form (Krashen and Terrell, 1983; Di Pietro,
1989).
For this reason, supporters of modern approaches do not
suggest that teachers correct students' errors but rather they
should make use of students' errors.
On the other hand, those
who are in favor of traditional approaches claim that errors
should be corrected so that students will not form wrong habits.
They suggest that teachers use a variety of techniques
correct students' errors.
44
to
Both traditionalists and supporters of modern approaches
agree that learners' errors should be studied.
Therefore, what
teachers should do is to analyze their students' errors carefully
and to decide how to deal with those errors.
to know various theories on those errors.
Teachers also have
This study is a
attempt to give EFL teachers an insight into helping them
understand the relation between syntax and errors and to choose
their own policies for their own teaching situations to make use
of the errors committed in the field of syntax or to overcome
them.
45
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49
APPENDIXES
Table 1
Frequencies of Errors Hade bv the Hazırlık Students
at..Ege University
FB
0
A
2
4
B
1
1
TW
C
WS
1
2
2
2
1
3
4
1
1
C
2
WCh
EW
P
WE
1
2
2
D
4
E
2
5
3
F
3
1
2
2
G
4
2
2
2
1
H
5
2
3
5
1
I
4
1
4
7
J
3
6
3
3
4
33
26
8
22
TOT
NoteiS.:
4
12
22
1
4
2
1.
The students were given a composition test.
2.
The letters A, B, C,.,.., J ind icate the students.
3.
See Page 30 for other abbreviations which indicate
the syntactic errors
51
4
Table 2
Frequencies of Errors Made bv the Hazırlık Students
at Billten t U n i v e r s i t y
A
FB
0
3
1
3
B
TW
c
1
WS
2
1
2
WCh
2
EW
P
WE
1
1
C
4
1
5
3
1
D
1
2
3
3
1
E
4
5
3
2
1
F
3
1
2
G
1
1
H
2
1
I
1
4
Note:
19
6
14
5
2
2
3
4
J
TOT
1
4
1
1
3
2
24
18
8
1
The students were given a composition test.
52
2
22
Table 3
Frequencies of Errors Hade bv the Students
at Dokuz Evliil University Faculty of Education
FB
0
TW
WS
WCh
A
2
B
4
C
2
D
2
E
1
£W
WE
F
G
H
2
I
1
J
13
TOT
Note:
The students were given a translation test
53
Table 4
Frequencies of Errors Made bv ttie. Students
at JLstanbul University Faculty_nf Education
_
A
B
c
D
E
F
G
H
I
1
!
f
FB
0
TW
1
2
WS
WCh
8
2
3
2
6
1
2
3
2
1
3
5
2
3
1
2
5
2
1
2
3
3
2
5
9
1
2
3.
!
1
1
!
I
1
2
1
1
1
!
1
!
1
1
1
1
i
1
' 1
i
1
3
1
EW
. 12
17
7
23
21
1
The students were given a translation test.
54
P
WE
1
2
5
1
5
j
Note:
1
3
1
1
1
1
i 1
1
1
TOT! 1
1
1
c
1
6
2
38
Table 5
FrequenQİes..o£— Errors İn the ComBosition Test
Error
type
Number of
students
who made the error
Number of
errors
Percentage
FB
47
20.0
17
0
18
7.6
10
TW
14
5.9
7
C
2
0.8
2
WS
54
23.0
18
WCh
44
18.8
16
EW
1
0.4
1
P
10
4.2
6
WE
44
18.8
16
234
100 %
TOTALS:
Note:
10 students from Ege University Hazırlık and 10 students
from Bilkent University Hazırlık were tested.
55
Table 6
Frequencie.s....Qf._Er.rQrs Hade in the Translation Test
Error
type
Number of
errors
FB
Percentage
Number of
students
who made the error
1
0.7
1
0
16
11.3
8
TW
20
14.1
7
C
1
0.7
1
WS
24
17.0
10
WCh
34
24.1
11
£W
1
0.7
1
P
2
1.4
2
WE
42
29.7
10
TOTALS:
141
Nota:
100 %
10 students from D9 kuz Eylül University Faculty of
Education and 10 students from Istanbul University Faculty of
Education were tested.
56
RESUME
I was born in İsparta in 1961.
school education in İzmir.
I completed my primary
After I graduated from Buca Lisesi in
1979, I studied toward my undergraduate education at the English
Teaching Department of Buca Faculty of Education.
In 1985, I worked as a high-school teacher in Elazığ.
I
also taught English at Turkish-American Association in İzmir.
have been a lecturer at the Foreign Languages Department of Ege
University since 1985.
57
I